Tag Archives: masochism

Negotiation of the Detour: The Pervert’s Guide to the Origin of Rhetoric

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

Accompanied by a black and white dog, a huntress, not young, steps from a blue grove into the dawn light. It’s spring; we are outside of Athens in 508 BC. Pericles will not be born for another 13 years. The … Continue reading →

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In heaven as it is on earth? Are religious mysticism and Hegel’s “aufgehoben” (transmutation) sublimated forms of masochism?

Posted on May 21, 2010 by

The 81-year-old sociologist Peter Berger thinks that they are. In his book on the sociology of religion, The Sacred Canopy  (1967), he wrote this of mysticism (64): The extent to which the mystical surrender may be called masochistic varies empirically, … Continue reading →

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Does Emily Dickinson Call Herself “the only kangaroo among the beauty” in One of Her Poems?

Posted on October 14, 2009 by

No. But she does in one of her letters. In Emily Dickinson’s letter (dated July, 1862) to Thomas Higginson, a chief editor of The Atlantic Monthly, she writes this delicious, somewhat erotically suggestive, and arguably even naughty, paragraph: Perhaps you smile at … Continue reading →

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“Good Friday”: A Poem by Christina Rossetti (Published in 1896)

Posted on August 17, 2008 by

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,      That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,      To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep?   Not so those women loved      Who … Continue reading →

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